Biggest. Reach. EVER.

You just need one sentence:

Food guru Margaret Fulton has condemned genetically-modified produce, likening companies pushing its merits to Adolf Hitler.

If you thought this was a mischaracterization … well, no.

At the guide’s launch, Ms Fulton hit out at the big chemical companies for pushing the “benefits” of growing GE canola to farmers for their commercial gain.

“They’re going to control the world,” she said.

“We thought Hitler was a bad fella … these guys could show him a thing or two – and they’re creeping up on us quietly without guns or anything like that, but the poison is there.”

Bloody hell. Even if there were real, serious risks to GM food – which, if they exist, are insanely overblown when compared to the possibility of eliminating hunger in our lifetime – the comparison should make us all feel sick.

Everything’s Bigger in Texas

In the first round of the Division II football playoffs, West Texas A&M scored 68 points and gained 721 yards on offense … and lost. BY 25.

Through the Economic Looking Glass

Two articles at Reason note just how confused and outright delusional politicians and economic pundits have become in recent months.

More Ridiculously Improbable News

Bahrain, an island in the Persian Gulf, has named a Jewish woman — one of only thirty-seven Jews in the entire country — as the nation’s ambassador to the United States. (link)

Life Never Ceases To Surprise

Myron Rolle plays safety at Florida State — a football factory with, say, a sub-stellar academic reputation for undergraduates. The ancient Bobby Bowden oversees a program often laden with malcontents, primadonnas, and antisocial personalities. Indeed, five of his wide receivers are suspended for today’s game after getting in a fight at the student union. Rolle may miss part of next week’s game — because he’ll be in a Rhodes Scholarship interview. Really. He’s graduating in just five semesters with a 3.75 GPA in pre-med. And he plays football. At Florida State. Go figure.

The Day I Feared

Former Indians ace CC Sabathia, rightly dealt by the Tribe for a king’s ransom of prospects to the Milwaukee Brewers in an acquisition that almost single-handedly brought the long-suffering Brew Crew their first playoff berth in over a quarter-century, received a contract offer from the Dreaded, Loathsome New York Yankees™ today that would make him the highest paid pitcher in baseball history — a six-year contract worth a mind-blowing $140 million.

Don’t do it, man. Please. You like batting in the National League, right? Don’t join the dark side. Don’t make me root against you.

On a totally unrelated note, I picked up a T-Mobile G1 today. It is at least 875 kinds of awesome, though I’m still counting …

Please, Washington, Let GM Die

WARNING: Angry rant ahead.

General Motors is now, apparently, bordering on insolvency. Somehow, this is not the fault of incompetent management and engineers that produce an inferior product, or past agreements with labor unions that lock in massive fringe benefit costs for current and past workers, or any number of other things that are part of what is left of the free market. No, there is an epic crisis that totally just started when the financial crisis hit and they need money. Apparently, the fact that we JUST LOANED THEM $25 BILLION doesn’t count, or matter, or something. The rationale for the $700 billion+ bailout was flimsy, though at least understandable (under its initial archetype, not the sheer socialism of buying up banks); if we expand this to the auto makers, then we start out down a very long road that will lead to every depressed firm and industry asking for a bailout. The trope about privatizing profits and socializing losses will become a complete reality. If companies are never held accountable for poor business decisions, YOU WILL GET MORE BAD DECISIONS. It’s called moral hazard. Look it up, Congresscritters. Further, you will have completely removed Schumpeterian “creative destruction” from the economic landscape. In the future, at this rate, you’ll have the 21st century equivalent of buggy and typewriter manufacturers not going out of business, but sucking at the taxpayer teat indefinitely. We are hastening the end. The national debt is now skyrocketing at a literally incalculable rate. Demographics-based entitlement programs will wipe us out like a tidal wave. And what do we do? Try to save every bad corporation with bailouts. In other words, THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU SHOULD DO. We need to let everything wash out now and get government out of owning businesses. For the love of God, don’t cut the Big Three a check. You’ll have to pay off everybody else too.

And finally there’s this, which … well, my head just exploded:

Palin 2012: Feel the Excitement!

Oh, it’s happening, everybody.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin suggested in an interview broadcast on Monday that she might run for higher office in 2012 if the right opportunity presents itself. …

Palin, whose term as governor ends in two years, said she could not predict the future. But she said it would be “very exciting” to have an opportunity to serve in a greater capacity.

“If there is an open door in ’12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.”

Now the only question is whether her staging ground is Anchorage (Juneau is a pretty much a Potemkin capital) or Capitol Hill. She’d have to win a special election to take Stevens’ seat, were he to be expelled, but given her popularity in the Arctic, that’d seem to be a fait accompli.

Sarah Palin’s never going away. She’ll haunt your dreams, America.

You betcha.

Wait, What?

Let’s hope this is right-wing fear-mongering and not an actual policy proposal. All you need is the first line:

Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.

Alright, that’s actual honest-to-goodness socialism. Yikes.

In other news: Lying on the Internet is now a federal crime.

Why Barack Is My Homeboy

From Michael Hersh of Newsweek, who articulates it better than I could:

What Obama’s election means, above all, is that brains are back. Sense and pragmatism and the idea of considering-all-the-options are back. Studying one’s enemies and thinking through strategic problems are back. Cultural understanding is back. Yahooism and jingoism and junk science about global warming and shabby legal reasoning about torture are out. The national culture of flag-pin shallowness that guided our foreign policy is gone with the wind. And for this reason as much as any, perhaps I can renew my pride in being an American.

I’m under no illusion that Barack Obama will turn out to be Barack Panacea. In terms of holding a major office, he’s the least experienced president in memory. He’ll probably screw up a lot of things, especially at first. The problems he faces–from the economic crisis to Iran’s nuclear program–are just too hard… But, frankly, these are all risks worth taking after nearly eight years of a president who could barely form a coherent sentence, much less a strategic thought. We can finally go back to respecting logic and reason and studiousness under a president who doesn’t seem to care much about what is “left,” “right” or ideologically pure. Or what he thinks God is saying to him.
A guy who keeps religion in its proper place—in the pew… Sun Belt politics represented by George W. Bush—the politics of ideological rigidity, religious zealotry and anti-intellectualism—”has for the moment played itself out,” says presidential historian Robert Dallek.